Excuse My Face, It Won’t Go Away

So Spike Milligan finally died, possibly the funniest ersatz Irishman of the late 20th Century. I liked this interview with Van Morrison:

S: Are you a Proddy, Van? Don’t come near me, I don’t want to catch it.
V: Basically I’m not really anything.
S: Aren’t you? So when I introduce you to people I say, “Here is Not Anything. This is Van Not Anything Morrison. A singer and Not Anything.” You must be something.
V: Well theoretically I’m Church Of Ireland.
S: Proddy? Oh Jaysus I won’t mention this to my mother. “Dear Mother, I spoke to a Protestant today.” “Oh God forgive you, son. Go and confess it.” “Father I have sinned.” Amazing the power of the Catholic Church. My father went bald very early, and he was so incensed by it that he went to church and prayed for it to come back. I’m certain he went to a priest and confessed, “Dear Father forgive me, I have gone bald.” “Go away, my son, buy three wigs and say one Hail Mary.”

Without dear old Spike there would have been no Monty Python, or Father Ted, or League of Gentlemen, and the world would have been a meaner place.

I remember being a small child, in the 1970s, watching Spike’s TV shows in a bemused and baffled state, knowing there was something desperately funny and bizarre going on yet kind of wondering why it didn’t seem to make as much sense as Monty Python or Fawlty Towers or The Goodies. I thought at the time they were better. Now I know they were merely simpler, comedy-by-committee made to fit into neat TV genre slots, instead of the wild anarchic Dada genius of Spike.

A liking for Spike Milligan and crumbly old scifi magazines from the 1930s were probably the two best things me and my Grandad shared. We Gooned together.

He was knighted by the English Queen but, because of his acceptance of Irish citizenship (which forbids the use of English titles), he could not be known as Sir Spike. His vegetarianism and environmentalism inspired me as a callow teen to take that route.

On his 75th birthday, he had this to say:
When I look back, the fondest memory I have is not really of the Goons. It is of a girl called Julia with enormous breasts.

He once said he wanted the epitaph on his grave to read:
I told you I was ill.